Some souls went straight to the weighing chambers, some wandered the Halls of Judgment, some—those that are too rotten for judgment—landed inside the Twelve Gates and didn’t get the chance to understand what hit them before they’re scattered to the eternal winds.
The lack of sound was the first thing I noticed. A deafening silence. Beneath my hands, cracks zig-zagged through the earth, snaking into the distance. My gaze tracked them until it fell upon the storm churning on the horizon. Was it any surprise I’d ended up in the Gates? Anubis wouldn’t waste time weighing my heart against the Feather of Truth. Monsters like me were made to break the Scales of Justice.
I straightened to my full height, lifted my chin, and left my hands loose at my sides. So this was what being dead felt like. I had the memory of a body, needing to breathe, my racing heart—but none of it was real. I’d seen enough souls to know I was just a glowing mass about to be hit by world-shattering winds. A black mass, but insubstantial nonetheless.
The last time I’d been here, I’d had Cat at my side. She had faced the storm head-on, looking death in the eye. She shouldn’t have survived. As for me, I hadn’t known what I was then. I’d been a shadow of my true self. But things were different this time. I wasn’t any soul. I was one of the first ever souls. The first to harbor all the dark. The first spawn of the Neith, the Creation Goddess. The Twelve Gates were my battlefield. I’d faced Amun Ra here—scorched the earth and the skies—day after day, century after century, for thousands of years. For an eternity, I’d fought him. I had wanted the Light. I had hungered like nothing the worlds were capable of. I had hungered because I had been made that way. I had devoured the Dark and the Wrong before time began. I’d swallowed worlds that were no longer remembered. But the Light… For so long denied, I’d ached for the Light. Ra had stood in my way on this battlefield. And with the Eye of Ra, he’d beaten me back. Over and over and over… Day versus night. And every day we would end as equals, neither winning.
I reached over my shoulder and touched Alysdair’s handle.
“Look who’s winning now…” The words sounded English in my head, but came out twitching like living things and sailed across the land.
Ra wasn’t here to stop me this time.
Wherever he had gone, he wasn’t coming back. The Twelve Gates were mine, and once I reached the other side, the Light would be mine too. All the souls in the underworld, and all the souls in the human world. Everything. Mine.
Finally, I was winning.
I started walking toward the storm. My boots didn’t make a sound. Only my heartbeat and my thoughts sounded in my head.
After all this time and all the battles, all I had to do was walk into the storm and make it my own, then take that storm and crush all those who opposed me.
“Is this you?”
I paused at the sound of the ferryman’s voice, surprised to hear it here, so far from the River. The words floated, just like mine had, not really starting or ending anywhere, but finding their way to me all the same. I turned on the spot, but I couldn’t see him.
The ferryman. Once my only friend in a world that despised me. “You knew me as soon as Ammit came to you,” I said, “but you were prevented from revealing the truth… by me.”
“Why are you here?” the ferryman’s disconnected voice asked.
“For the Light…”
“Was it always about the Light, or was it about the battle?”
I turned around again, keeping the approaching winds in the corner of my eye. If the ferryman was trying to distract me, it wouldn’t work. I had what I wanted within my reach. I’d died, and now I was home. Nothing could stop me now.
“What will you be when the Light is gone?” he asked.
My fingers twitched, as did a fresh smile. “Satisfied.”
“This battle—Night and Day, Dark and Light—it must never be won. Without the Dark, there is no Light. Without the Light…”
I started walking again, my stride eating up the distance. “You do not understand what it is to be hollow for eternity. Once I swallow the Light, I will be whole.”
“Even if having it destroys everything? Two worlds will fall.”
“They are not the first.”
“What of the people you love? The life you care for?”
“Love?” I laughed. “Love. Hate. Care. These motives are insignificant.”
“But you do care…”
My stride faltered. “You do not know me, ferryman.”
“I know the boy who was found on the banks of the Great River. The nameless boy. He swam with souls and played with the crocodiles and beasts beneath the Halls. He broke all the rules. He infuriated the gods. Later, he rose to power alongside the Great Devourer, but his nature became too strong for him to deny. He could not keep the Dark at bay. Had the gods seen the truth, they would have understood.”
“No, they would have locked me inside a mountain for thousands of years.” I picked up my pace, turning my walk into a jog. I would not let the ferryman take this victory from me.
“Yes, because they fear what you are. Not a god. A force much older than them. A force they can’t control, but a force that can change.”
A god cannot change.
Watch me.
I stopped, opened my arms, and turned on the spot. “Show yourself. Or are you afraid to face me?” I could hear the storm, hear its distant howling rolling closer. It would soon be on me. The ferryman was a distraction I didn’t need.
He appeared suddenly—a cloaked, hunched figure against the barren landscape. As always, the space inside his hood was empty, just a swirl of mist. To see him here, outside of his boat, away from the River, something about it felt deeply wrong and sent a cool shiver trickling down my spine.
“You want to stop me? Fight me,” I told him.
“I am not here to fight you.”
I narrowed my eyes and stepped forward. His image flickered, blinked out, and appeared farther away.
“You protected Mafdet’s mortal descendant inside the Twelve Gates. Did you not care then?” he asked.
“I was Ace Dante then.”
His image flickered again and reappeared to my right. “What of attempting to save the archaeologists by asking Hatshepsut’s soul for help?”
“Ace Dante.”
Flicker. This time he appeared behind me, turning me around on the spot.
“The witches you killed and brought back at a great cost to your mind and body.”
This was getting old. “Ace Dante,” I snarled. “What’s your point?”
“Who made Ace Dante?”
“I did…” I’d answered before understanding, but as the words leaped free, they triggered something inside me. An understanding. I had created Ace Dante to hide in. Didn’t that mean I was capable of all these things the ferryman spoke of? How could I create a man who cared if I was a creature who didn’t know how to care?
I eyed the ferryman and the winds churning behind him, whipping up dust and ash, the remains of worlds gone by—worlds I’d destroyed. I wasn’t here for this. This wasn’t the battle I was meant to be fighting. There was another war. New York. Seth. Osiris. It all had to be stopped. Cat, Shukra, Cujo, Chuck, Nile. I couldn’t abandon them. But more than that, Duat and the Halls of Judgment were under threat. If the Halls fell, if the Journey collapsed, there would be no more eternal life. No more Light. The balance of life and death would be upset. The Light I so coveted would wilt and die. Life, death, day, night, good, bad, right, wrong. Light. Dark. I wasn’t here to destroy the Light. The ferryman was right. I needed it because without it, I was nothing. I needed the Light to exist. I could never devour it. That was my desire, but it wasn’t my purpose. I would never—could never be sated.
I turned my face away from the storm. I had to go back to Duat. The gods had to be stopped. Balance had to be restored.
I understood.
The ferryman’s hood shifted. “You do not have to be good to do good.”
Shukra had said the same. Either he and Shukra had been talking, or he had been listening. If he was listening in on the human world, that made him far more powerful than the image of a simple boatman presented.
If I could hide all my power and presence inside the body of a nameless boy, it stood to reason that other missing gods could do the same.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“An old friend and enemy.” His image flickered and vanished, this time for good. I had my suspicions, but I could unpack those thoughts later.
The storm of ash growled closer. But this wasn’t my fight. Not today. That didn’t mean getting out would be a walk in the park. I freed Alysdair and relaxed the hold on my power, spilling much of it through my grip and into the sword. As more of me bled outward, the dust and ash around me lifted into the air, disturbed by my resonance.
A wall of dust and ash barreled closer, rising so high I couldn’t see its peak. Against it, I was just another mote. The last time I’d stood against the storm, it had torn me apart. Cat too. This time, I was dead, but all the stronger for it.
I reached deep into the earth, stirring the bones of old worlds, rousing them from their slumber. Layer upon layer of fragmented souls, set down over thousands of years, over thousands of battles, but this time, I wasn’t waking the dead to rise against Ra. I was remaking them to rise against the gods. All of them.
Silent lightning cracked through the storm. I tasted burnt power in the air, that and ash. I lifted Alysdair—lifted the weight of my power—and dragged the fragments of souls from their slumber and remade them into creatures made of Dark. The storm slammed into me, over me, slicing a million needles into my soul, but where it should have torn me apart, it washed through, swirled my presence, and stirred up the Dark, filling me out, building me up, stretching this vastness of Dark until I became the storm.